Estimation of the thermal separation of soil particles from the thermal conductivity under reduced air pressure

Knowledge of thermal conductivity of granular materials under reduced air pressure can be utilized for studying intricate mechanisms of heat transfer in two‐phase systems. We measured the thermal conductivity of three soils of varied texture and two sets of glass beads (GB) under reduced air pressure using a twin heat probe. We also predicted the thermal conductivity of a two‐phase system at reduced air pressure from the modified Woodside & Messmer equation based on the kinetic theory of gases. This equation includes a thermal separation of solid particles (d) defined by the heat conduction. We compared this separation with the geometrical mean separation of solid particles (D). The results showed a linear relation between d and D for the GB, and in all cases d was smaller than D. This suggests that conductive heat transfer in two‐phase GB takes place mainly through air spaces the dimension of which is smaller than D. The d of a Red Yellow soil and an Ando soil, however, were about 200–300 times larger than D. This result seems to be related to the soil aggregation. We showed that in soil aggregates the conduction of heat through the solid was the dominant mode of heat transfer, and the micropores in a soil aggregate had very little effect on the diminished thermal conductivity under reduced air pressure. The decrease in the thermal conductivity of two‐phase soil under reduced air pressure is probably caused by the air molecules confined in interaggregate pore spaces rather than those in the intra‐aggregate pore spaces. The d of soils can be used to represent the thermal separation of the interaggregate pore spaces, and soil aggregates can be treated as single‐grained particles in evaluating heat conduction.